Tag Archives: May

Apr 19

“Beowulf”: A Badass, Raucous Production

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Kickin'it olde school. Photo by Evgenia Eliseeva

Kickin’it olde school. Photo by Evgenia Eliseeva

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Presented by American Repertory Theatre
A songplay by Banana Bag and Bodice
Text and lyrics by Jason Craig
Music by Dave Malloy
Directed by Rod Hipskind, Mallory Catlett

Oberon
Cambridge, MA
April 16 – May 5
A.R.T. Facebook Page

Review by Gillian Daniels

(Cambridge) An aggressively weird audio feast, this Beowulf is a musical take on the millennia-old epic-poem. The dialogue performs the syntax gymnastics of Seamus Heaney’s translation while the songs are guttural and set to a frantic, pleasing percussion. Banana Bag and Bodice’s production, though, both honors the source material while dissecting it. Continue reading →

Apr 08

Timeless Greed is Coming to MRT with Glengarry Glen Ross

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Glengarry
presented by Merrimack Repertory Theatre
MRT Facebook Page

Directed by Charles Towers
Listing by Craig Idlebrook

Greed may not be good, as fictional stockbroker Gordon Gekko once famously espoused, but it never goes out of style.

In the 1987 film Wall Street, Gekko’s ode to greed was devastating to hear for Americans who had just suffered through insider trading and junk bond scandals.  The late eighties also produced Glengarry Glen Ross, a razor-sharp play by David Mamet which examines greed on the micro-level, as bottom-feeding real estate agents in Buffalo lie, cheat and steal to sell tracts of land in Florida.  While focusing on everyday financial crimes, Mamet creates an allegory for Wall Street greed that resonated with Main Street theatergoers in the late eighties. Continue reading →

Feb 14

Wandering into the “Lunar Labyrinth”

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lunar_site_v1a

Based on “A Lunar Labyrinth” by Neil Gaiman
Directed by Steven Bogart
Music composed by Mary Bichner, Mali Sastri, John J. King, Phillip Berman and Jesse Amerding
Harp incidental music by Phillip Berman

Presented by Liars & Believers

February 13 @ 8pm (only one performance, alas!)
Club Oberon
Cambridge, MA
Liars & Believers Facebook Page

Review by Special Guest: Noe Kamelamela

(Cambridge) Lunar Labyrinth was truly a collaborative performance, a meeting of varied art forms.  A theatrical adaptation of a chilling story which Neil Gaiman specifically wrote for Liars & Believers, this production made for a night filled with nontraditional staged performance buoyed by the aide of formatted storytelling styles and brave performers. Continue reading →

Nov 13

indiegogo Campaign: “From Denmark With Love”

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Vaquero Playground: Fun, Cheap, Dirty Plays made just for Boston.
FROM DENMARK WITH LOVE,
May 10 – June 1, 2013
Boston Playwrights’ Theatre

Vaquero Playground Facebook Page

WHO WE ARE and WHAT We’re Doing:
In Spring of 2013 Vaquero Playground will be bringing it’s biggest production yet: FROM DENMARK WITH LOVE, a mash-up parody of Shakespeare’s Hamlet and the one and only Bond, James Bond.
Written by John J King, the play stars Boston rising legend Daniel Berger-Jones and is directed by Barlow Adamson.

What We Need
Funds raised for the project will go primarily to the hard-working cast, crew, and creative team.  But just as importantly, the monies will go towards making sure the show is as BIG, bold, and exciting as it’s sources demand.
$3000 will go towards stipends for artists.
$3000 will go towards set, costumes, props, and necessary rehearsal space.

THREE WAYS TO HELP!
1. Toss us some Cash!
2. Spread the word!  Post the video on Facebook and Twitter; email friends; help us tell the world what we’re doing!
3. LIKE us on Facebook – best way to keep tabs on the show and everything from Vaquero Playground!

Jun 16

Awesomeness on Wheels: ROLLER DISCO: THE MUSICAL

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photo credit: Ministry of Theater

Roller Disco:  The Musical, book by Sam Forman and Jen Wineman, lyrics by Sam Forman, music by Eli Bolin, Ministry of Theater and Club Oberon, 5/30/12-8/30/12, http://www.rollerdiscothemusical.com/Home.html.

Reviewed by Craig Idlebrook

(Cambridge, MA) Sometimes, you come across a play that works so effortlessly on so many levels that it skates circles around your standard theatrical fare.  Club Oberon’s Roller Disco, glittery, vacant, hyper and hysterical, draws the audience into a disco-soaked world from the theme song’s opening strands.  We have no choice but to harken back to striped tube socks, gritty skating rinks and cheesy eighties movies.  Heck, we never even put up a fight. Continue reading →

Jun 01

Hell is Other People: PRIVATE LIVES

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Bianca Amato and James Waterston in Noël Coward’s PRIVATE LIVES. May 25 – June 24, 2012 at the BU Theatre. huntingtontheatre.org. Photo: Paul Marotta

Private Lives by Noel Coward, Huntington Theatre, Boston University Theatre, 5/25/12-6/24/12, http://www.huntingtontheatre.org/season/2011-2012/private-lives/.

Reviewed by Craig Idlebrook

Sometimes, the mark of a good play is how close it comes to the bone.  If you are secure in your romantic relationship, you will laugh heartily at Noel Coward’s Private Lives, playing at the Huntington.  If you aren’t secure, you will laugh nervously.  If you are single, you will laugh derisively.  Either way, you will laugh at this mashup of the foibles of all passionate lovers everywhere. Continue reading →

May 27

Connecting with the Cheerfully Cheesy “Xanadu”

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McCaela Donovan and Ryan Overberg, Photo: Craig Bailey/Perspective Photo

Xanadu, book by Douglas Carter Beane, music and lyrics by Jeff Lynne and John Farrar, Speakeasy Stage Company, Roberts Studio Theatre at the Boston Center for the Arts, 5/11/12-6/9/12, http://www.speakeasystage.com/doc.php?section=showpage&page=xanadu.

Reviewed by Gillian Daniels

Xanadu, the 1980 film featuring Olivia Newton John and music by the Electric Light Orchestra, is well known for being a critical flop.  The chief crime of this cinematic musical, however, is in creating entertainment that doesn’t connect with its audience.  After all, it’s a movie about disco released a year after the genre died a largely un-mourned death.  I’m hard pressed to find a better image of disconnection than that.

In being brought to the stage, Xanadu has finally found its correct medium.  The show not only finds its audience but winks at it furiously throughout the course of the story. Continue reading →

May 23

Trojan Women: An Atmospheric View of the Devastation of War

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photo credit: Whistler in the Dark

Trojan Women by Euripides,
Whistler in the Dark,
The Factory Theatre,
5/18/12-6/2/12, http://www.whistlerinthedark.com/productions/trojanwomenprod.html.

Reviewed by Anthony Geehan

(Boston, MA) The end of war is something that is looked on as a celebratory event. Images of servicemen returning home, country’s flags being raised, and a collective sigh of relief from the population are the usual symbols that are associated with victory. There is however always a losing side in a war who must deal with a devastated homeland, a shamed or exterminated army, and the loss of everything their civilization was or could ever be. Continue reading →

May 10

Keeping the Bard on His Toes: MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING

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Much Ado About Nothing…With A Twist adapted by Daniel Morris, Bad Habit Productions, Deane Hall at Boston Center for the Arts, 4/28/12-5/13/12, http://www.badhabitproductions.org/shows/season/MuchAdo.html.

Review by Craig Idlebrook

(Boston, MA) There’s a funny story the actor Charles Grodin shares about famed acting teacher Uta Hagen, where Hagen was dissecting the terribleness of a scene Grodin had just done.  She hated everything except for one moment when Grodin’s scene partner was slow to hand the actor a prop.  Because there was a delay, Grodin looked genuinely concerned, and that, Hagen announced, was true acting.

I’m not a big fan of the Method myself, but I’m starting to see her point, especially when it comes to Shakespeare.  Acting involves a weird combo of memorization and playful improvisation.  But when it comes to the Bard’s work, too many productions are populated with actors who know they are saying weighty words and making weighty gestures; every move is preordained and dripping with importance.  Such a style robs the lyrical and impish qualities of plays that once were performed for bawdy Elizabethans.

Luckily, there are productions like Bad Habit’s staging of Much Ado About Nothing to inject life into scripts that we have too long sanctified.   Continue reading →

May 10

Geeks Nerds and Artists Episode 6: Spiro Veloudos

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photo credit: Lyric Stage of Boston

Episode 6: Geeks, Nerds & Artists Podcast: Spiro Veloudos, Artistic Director of Lyric Stage Company of Boston and director of current production of Avenue Q

http://www.lyricstage.com/

Avenue Q: May 11-June 24, 2012 (it is selling out presently)

Spiro Veloudos is the Producing Artistic Director of The Lyric Stage Company. and has been honored with numerous awards and honors including The Elliot Norton Award and The Independent Reviews of New England (IRNE) Award. He has been personally honored with the 2006 Elliot Norton Prize for Sustained Excellence, Stage Source’s 2002 Theatre Hero Award and was cited as the city’s Best Artistic Director by Boston Magazine’s Best of Boston program in 1999. Continue reading →

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